


Frost

by White_Rabbits_Clock



Series: Winter [1]
Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5510471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/White_Rabbits_Clock/pseuds/White_Rabbits_Clock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hi! so yetmoreprompts on tumblr (http://yetmoreprompts.tumblr.com/) posted this prompt: </p><p>Theme Prompt Thursday.016<br/>It’s time for your annual Winter Solstice Masked Ball.</p><p>My summary: on the winter solstice, powerful outcasted warlock Sherlock Holmes sees John Watson while haunting his enemies.</p><p>I'm bored, so I wrote it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frost

SHERLOCK

 

You are the enemy; those who would kill you are heros. Their lovers have a ring on each delicate finger. Their children are protected and loved by those around them. You have used each of these roles to twist them at one point or another. It is for this reason that you have neither. It won’t do to hang in one’s own noose, after all.

As the wind blows, it carries with it heavy burst of frozen water. It rushes over the landscape, gradually deepening the silvery white of a full moon’s snow on the midwinter solstice. It is, for this reason, a very rare solstice. It has prompted your movements tonight.

Icy waves attack the sleeping world and dare warm creatures to spend even a few moments out of their little holes and boroughs. None risk the pneumonia and frostbite. those that do have no choice, and soon sleep forever. A particular gust is more purposeful than the rest.

It rattles against the doors of a great house surrounded by a buried garden. Beyond that: the city. Outside, it is desolate. Inside, it is warm and tinkling as the night’s festivities are well underway. They are all dressed to the nines, the women in their billowing skirts and the men in their waistcoats and cumberbunds.

Flutes of champagne and little snacks are consumed right in front of your eyes as you rattle against the tall stained glass windows. They think nothing of it. You are one of many, after all.

Every now and then, all over the room, someone waves their hand, and something will float. An invisible hand will take hold and lift visible skirts. A chair will be pulled out with no one to do the pulling; magic at its tamest.

You, however, have not been invited. Should you wave your hand, they would produce flames from their fingertips and spears from the palms of their hands. They would attempt to behead you and shout at you about your tendencies. Murderous as they are, those gathered are hardly any better, with the way they hunt you down.

You search for an entrance as your eyes alight and deduce a man you’ve never seen before. He is new but not so young as to be gullible. You look at the way he stands and deduce military. You look at his cane and know that it’s all in his head. You look at his arm and know the wound to be in his shoulder. His position is on the outer edge of the room. You know him to be shy, a wallflower at best, and a captive of propriety at worse. You like him, like the way he seems to slip effortlessly in and out of conversation, though it costs him much in reality.

You decide to ask him, to see where he lies in the politics you’re oh so enmired in, here at the windows protecting the Solstice Ball. You leave the windows, content in the knowledge that he will remain. You plow across the rooftops and touch the sills of the other windows, looking for an entrance.

There are none.

They are foolish though, to think that a Warlock of the Winter Order would not be able to gain entry to a building on a solstice. You find a maid who doesn’t have magic, who wouldn’t know what to do with you, should you show yourself. You rage against the little window that protects her and her candle. You scream your frustration and howl at the heavy panes.

She looks up sharply, her freckled face covered in surprise as what sounds like a human crying for help reaches her through the glass. She cautiously opens the window just a crack, slipping the latches so she can hear. That’s all you need. You’re careful not to rush your entrance at a pace faster than the breaking storm outside. By the time she has confirmed that there is no one (or, at least, that it is too cold to stand there) and secured the window once more, you are inside.

You slow your pace and your manic energy to a gentle draught and pause, waiting. There. A man steps from the main gathering and into a rather small cigar lounge. You drift high above them, careful not to tinker with the diamond fixtures and crystals hanging from the four tiered chandelier and blow gently through the doorway to watch him. He lights his toby of choice and, as he exhales his first, then second, breath of smoke, you materialise in front of him.

He starts, recognition in his eyes. The deep hatred he has of you blooms over his face. You once kidnapped his wife and  held her at death’s point to get a confession from him. Then, when she chose to stay kidnapped… well, that was just insult to injury.

“Good evening, Mr. Hudson.” You can’t be seen from the cracked doorway, and no one else is in here.

“Frost,” he breathes. That’s not your name, but it’s the one you gave to him. William Frost, to be precise. You can see him winding himself up for a magical onslaught. You’re wearing clothing reminiscent of a priest's, minus the religion. It hides how blurry you are around the edges and requires less energy than fully manifesting himself.  You wave a hand in a single, lazy past.

You’re so much more powerful than Hudson is. You’re so much more trained and practiced than Hudson is. You’re so much better. It’s a no wonder his wife chose to stay with you and cluck at your health instead of going back to him.

Your magic stops him before he draw breath for the first cast. It creeps into his lungs and makes him exhausted and tired. Very tired. So tired his heart stops. (Mrs. Hudson, after all, has been having nightmares of his return. He was not a good husband) You feel the cold of death creep in as you lift him on your magic and hide him. Then, you begin to shift.

Black, flowing material becomes mustard yellow and close cut. Your edges gain clarity, your eyes darken and your skin tans. Your hair turns steel grey and balds as your skull’s proportions change. Your shoulders broaden and your stomach is fattened a bit, though not by much. Your features loose their near exotic arrangement in favor of his own more traditionally handsome face. Your hands are a bit shorter and bedecked in three different rings. There’s fat fleshing out the palms and calluses giving character to the digits. Your shorter, but not by much.

You look like him, down to the cigar.

Though it hurts, you take a few puffs of the one he’d forgotten about in his predicament. It burns. God, it burns like all the hellfire you’ve ever come through. You hates cigars, even in this accustomed body. You stand and stride in his side to side manner to and through the door, rejoining the party.

You wait a while, listening. You learn his name is John Watson, that he’s just been invalidated home, that he’s a throwback from the warlocks and witches of old generations, and he’s rather poor, in comparison to the rest of those here, as the magic had faded from the Watson line for quite some time.

You turn and make your way around the edge of the room. Hudson had done all the meeting and greeting and this body you’ve changed into is left free to target, in a very roundabout way, the soldier. You wait and, sure enough, pick up the fact that there is a large amount of dislike between Hudson and Watson. You must wait, then, for Watson’s deviation from the main crowd. He is uncomfortable here; it is inevitable.

Sure enough, he steps into the cigar room, and you follow him in a few minutes, knowing that, should he say yes, you will break him of this habit.

“Oh! Lord Hudson,” he says. You deduce that the smile is fake, that the relaxed posture is not relaxed at all, that he wants you to take yourself elsewhere so he can enjoy his cigar in peace.

“Captain Watson, if I may speak with you?” at Watson’s nod, you sits next to him, a bit closer than Hudson would, knowing you are being watched and that your every aberrant move is being recorded by relatively intelligent eyes. You like this soldier. Even more now that you have deduced his primary discipline: he is a doctor.

“What did you wish to speak of?” the captain asks, careful of his wording and watching for any sign of foul behavior.

“You. Your future, that is. I have a manor house, very out in the country, and it’s rather empty. There’s an old woman there who tends to it, but it’s outstandingly lonely there, and she should like a companion. So would I, of course. One tends to avoid the conversation of doddering widows when that’s all the company one has.”

The suspicion sharpens into conclusion.

“You aren’t Lord Hudson.”

“No. I dispatched the fool earlier in the evening. He’s in the closet now, if you’d like a look.” Your now silver eyes gleam at him in mirth and seriousness at the same time.

“Winter!” he barks as he stands and raises his hand to cast. You simply recline further, one arm of your very fine suit thrown over the back of the seat he has just vacated. Legs crossed. It would look better if it was your own body, but you are not ready to give up the disguise. He does not release his spell.

“Of that order, yes. But you may call me Frost. William Frost.” Captain Watson nods and begins to pace.

“How did you get in? Why are you here? Why me?”

“Why not you?” You say. The former two are too easy to waste time on, so they are ignored.

“Well… you could have nipped into see Lord Holmes, or one of the Ladies of the House.”

“Why would I do that?” You are genuinely intrigued and pleased because of it.

“They… they’re important,” he says. He’s trying to come up with an answer that just isn’t there. You let him, amused for the moment. You’ll have to cure him of the notion later, but later is not now.

“Oh, to each other. To you, maybe, though I doubt it. They are but nuisances to me, so I choose to avoid them. You, however, you don’t belong here. You don’t like it. You want to go, but have no choice but to stay,” you say, watching how uncomfortable you make him. Watching how you interest him.

“What’s it to you?” he says, falling back on army directness in his distress.

“I’d like to offer you something else. Something interesting,” here, you rise, your form becoming taller, thinner, the cut of your suit changing as it darkens and shines, revealing itself to be black silk. Your hair thickens and darkens and curls. Your fingers lengthen and loose the fat. You pale, all in a single step. You walk around him, and he follows you as you speak.

“I should think you game for an adventure.”

“What kind of adventure?”

“The kind with murder,” you breathe, “with blood and excitement, where there are no petty dances and the interactions are kept to a minimum. I’m offering your kind of adventure, Captain John Watson.”

“How do you know?” he asks, suddenly very scared that you’ve been haunting his steps. You smile and tell him. You can tell you almost have him. You just need a few more minutes…

Alas, it’s not to be. The door slams open. At the same moment, Watson fires his cast and you find yourself restrained by vines, of all things. The dark auric presence of Cornelius Vincent Enoch Holmes sweeps into the room, his own cast at the ready. You can’t get hit by that one. You abruptly dissolve into frost and ice and batter all, nearly blinding your own father as you whirl out of the room and pop the latches on another out-of-the-way window.

Then you are gone.

You’re sure, though, that you almost had him. You will have to go without him.

 

A YEAR LATER

 

He’s standing there in the middle of the roof on the solstice. The moon is not full, but you see him easily. Your many particles condense into a tall, limber body in what looks like a priest’s robes. He looks tired, but invigorated. This past year has not done him gently or well.

“Have you decided?” You have new scars and even a wound there was no healer around to fix. You wonder if this is the right thing to do.

“Yes. I… I would like to go on this adventure of yours,” Captain Watson says. You hold out a hand and he takes it. You pull him close, suddenly and your noses are just a few inches apart.

“Then, in that case, my name is Sherlock Holmes, and I solve bizarre crimes across the world.” He grins, and you smirk back.

“John Watson, of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and retired army doctor,” It’s too cold out here for John, but it matters not.

“Away we go then.” He brings the cane with him, but you know he’ll forget it soon. He’ll forget all about his limp and run after you and bother you because now he’s your assistant.

Solstice, you realized, has never been greater than this one right here.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I have enough room in a week to write one more fic. Any ideas?  
> Also... I have an AO3 feed on Tumblr, but I don't know what to do with it, so if you could give me advice on that, it'd be amazing.


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